ANALYSIS — Joe Biden stepped foot Monday on sub-Saharan African soil for the first time as president, but U.S. foreign policy increasingly runs through Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate as world leaders brace for the return of his combative isolationist approach.
What likely is Biden’s final overseas trip as America’s diplomat in chief has been overshadowed by Trump’s pointed conversations with traditional U.S. allies about his threatened tariffs, illegal immigration flows and other contentious issues.
A prime example came Saturday. Biden arrived back at the White House after a family Thanksgiving in Nantucket, Mass., in preparation for his trip to the southern African nation of Angola, which also included a stop in Cape Verde. The Africa swing was four years in the making and represented the fulfillment of a 2020 campaign trail pledge to visit the continent.
Meantime, in Palm Beach, Fla., the same day, Trump wrapped his second day of meetings with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The duo had a rocky relationship during the president-elect’s first term, and a top Trump ally just last week warned Trudeau and the leaders of the United Kingdom, France and Germany — all U.S. allies — of severe economic retaliation if any announced plans to abide by an International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“We should crush your economy because we’re next,” South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham told Fox News last week, warning, “Why can’t they go after Trump or any other American president?”
Eager to avoid an economic showdown early in Trump’s second term, Trudeau arrived in Florida on Friday and extended his time there into the weekend for more face time with the incoming U.S. leader. As the Trump team has opted against allowing a press pool to document the president-elect’s meetings and movements, journalists did not have a chance to ask the duo questions about the talks.
Trump provided his own version of the meetings in a Saturday social media post, once again driving headlines and shaping the narrative — just when the White House was eager to cast the Africa trip as part of the outgoing president’s legacy.
Trump said he and Trudeau “had a very productive meeting” during which they “discussed many important topics that will require both Countries to work together to address, like the Fentanyl and Drug Crisis that has decimated so many lives as a result of Illegal Immigration, Fair Trade Deals that do not jeopardize American Workers, and the massive Trade Deficit the U.S. has with Canada.”
The president-elect said he “made it very clear that the United States will no longer sit idly by as our Citizens become victims to the scourge of this Drug Epidemic, caused mainly by the Drug Cartels, and Fentanyl pouring in from China.” According to Trump, “Prime Minister Trudeau has made a commitment to work with us to end this terrible devastation of U.S. Families.”
Trudeau was more succinct in his own Saturday social media post, which included a photo of the pair sitting together at Mar-a-Lago: “Thanks for dinner last night, President Trump. I look forward to the work we can do together, again.”
The Canadian leader exhibited a tactic some world leaders leaned on during Trump’s first term: Say less today, hoping it pays off later — or at least delays the American leader’s more extreme instincts. And, notably, the future-focused Trudeau did not stop in Washington for a huddle with Biden. The White House did not indicate whether the two men had spoken over the weekend.
There have been other signs of Trump’s renewed influence on the world stage.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has used several media interviews to signal a new willingness to negotiate over territory now controlled by Russia. Previously, Zelenskyy had called for all such areas to be returned to Ukrainian control as a precondition for a possible peace deal.
“The change in Zelensky’s position is significant. It suggests he recognises the need to show flexibility in Kyiv’s negotiating position ahead of Donald Trump’s return to the White House in January next year,” wrote Richard Connolly, a Russia analyst at Oxford Analytica, which is owned by CQ Roll Call’s parent company, FiscalNote.
“By adjusting Ukraine’s position now, he might hope to seize the diplomatic initiative ahead of any peace talks by signalling to Trump that he is willing to negotiate in good faith,” Connolly added. “This could prompt Trump to increase pressure on Moscow to make concessions.”
The incoming president also spoke last week with the new Mexican president, Claudia Sheinbaum, though the pair offered differing accounts of their chat, which reportedly focused on the flow of migrants coming through Mexico to the U.S. border.
Trump’s rising influence on foreign policy matters was also present on a Friday press call during which senior Biden administration officials previewed the Africa trip. One reporter asked whether Biden’s visit could be impactful “when all the eyes of African leaders are on President-elect Trump?”
A senior administration official offered a paradoxical answer, expressing confidence that many of the departing president’s initiatives for Africa would continue under Trump — after years of Team Biden warning against a return to his isolationist “America first” foreign policy approach.
“If you think back to some of the really impactful initiatives that U.S. administrations have put forward, impactful initiatives like the … [U.S. International] Development Finance Corporation, that was a Trump administration institution that the Biden administration has taken forward,” the senior administration official said. “So while … I can’t speak for the next administration, I think there’s a lot of reason to assume that some of these initiatives will continue on.”
On the same call, another reporter asked if Biden officials were concerned that Trump could simply cancel some of the investments the outgoing administration has made in Africa.
“The point of them was to be financeable and bankable projects that turn a profit, and therefore, I don’t see any reason why any of these would be undone,” the senior official said. “And from my conversations, both with officials that are expected to be entering the Trump administration, as well as with bipartisan leaders in Congress, is that these projects are seen as the exact right thing to do.
“So I don’t see them being unwound,” the official added. “In fact, I would see some of them growing.”
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